The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra opens its 24th season with Disney in Concert: A Silly Symphony Celebration. The program is a tuneful and colorful celebration of 75 cartoons produced at the Walt Disney Studios between 1929 and 1939. During the production of these Academy Award-winning shorts Walt Disney perfected the skills essential to the creation of his first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). These advances and new developments in the use of color, special effects, character animation, music and storytelling continue to influence the art of animation today.
The Three Little Pigs (1933)
Disney will actually appear (via video) to explain the various techniques he and his animation team employed for each of these animated shorts including The Ugly Duckling, The Skeleton Dance, The Three Little Pigs, Flowers and Trees, The Old Mill and Music Land. Composers Leigh Harline, Frank Churchill and Carl Stalling (who went on to Looney Toons fame) and others penned the scores to these classic cartoons, which the KSO will perform in sync with the newly retored digital film masters.
This performance will mark the first time A Silly Symphony Celebration has been performed in public (outside of last month’s 23rd annual Disney Expo held in Anaheim, California). WKRC’s morning anchor Bob Herzog will share the stage with Disney and the KSO, acting as host for the premiere presentation.
The KSO presented the regional orchestral premiere of Disney’s Pirates of the Carribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl in 2012. In 2010, the KSO teamed up with members of the Warner animation team to create a cartoon concert that featured The Animaniacs as well as classic Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry and Pink Panther capers.
Music Land (1935)
“Live musical accompaniment to cartoons creates a unique audio/visual genre, allowing both musicians and audience to see, hear, experience and appreciate the indelible impact and role music plays in our cinematic viewing,” said KSO music director James Cassidy. “Besides, cartoons are where most of us were first exposed to classical music and the sound of the orchestra.”
In the studio the orchestra provides the accompaniment, mood, action and many of the sound effects in support of the characters voices and antics. The KSO’s percussionists and musicians will be busy covering all of the various instruments that are called for in these scores.
Step back to 1929-39 and join Walt Disney, Bob Herzog and members of the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra under the direction
of James Cassidy, for its season opener and a rare chance to see these classic cartoons accompanied live by orchestra — 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 3 at Florence Baptist Church at Mt. Zion. Reserved seating tickets are $24, $32, $40 (children ages 6-18 are 50 percent off) and are available online, by phone at (859) 431-6216 or at the door.
The KSO’s 24th season continues on Nov. 21 with “Stairway to Heaven” featuring epic works of Wagner and Bruckner. A Carnegie / KSO co-production and ten performance run of The Wizard of Oz follows Jan. 21-31. Heads Will Roll celebrates artistic freedom and the raucous music of Shostakovich with three local choirs on April 9. The season wraps up May 14 with the vocal versatility of Morgan James, who sings everything from Puccini to Prince as if it were written for her in a show they’ve dubbed Soulbrette.
From the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra
